I can help a little here, I am a former call center supervisor. You are most likely getting ahold of vendor call centers, I used to work at one of those. The supervisor's hands are truely tied in that situation They are stictly ran by numbers, so if I would have sent you a new phone or whatever... I could almost count on being written up. I needed to keep my job, I felt like the customer service suffered. The moral here, you absolutely need not get ahold of a "real" verizon call center if you are going to deal with them at all. They have more access to things, they have better training, and quite honestly they arent being paid 8.50 an hour to be screamed at. They most likely will not give you a location they are at, as these people are threatened every day. I think you would be able to figure out a vendor, I would just ask. Their ID number gives it away too... I just cant remember what one is a real call center number, ask them for it, I think a real agent is not a "VZ0" number. If you do get a vendor, just hang up.

I can help a little here, I am a former call center supervisor. You are most likely getting ahold of vendor call centers, I used to work at one of those. The supervisor's hands are truely tied in that situation They are stictly ran by numbers, so if I would have sent you a new phone or whatever... I could almost count on being written up. I needed to keep my job, I felt like the customer service suffered. The moral here, you absolutely need not get ahold of a "real" verizon call center if you are going to deal with them at all. They have more access to things, they have better training, and quite honestly they arent being paid 8.50 an hour to be screamed at. They most likely will not give you a location they are at, as these people are threatened every day. I think you would be able to figure out a vendor, I would just ask. Their ID number gives it away too... I just cant remember what one is a real call center number, ask them for it, I think a real agent is not a "VZ0" number. If you do get a vendor, just hang up.

hope this helps a little.

Out of the 7 Verizon employees we reached yesterday and today, only one gave us an employee ID number. ALL of the others said they are not required to and refused to do so. We kept asking for someone other than the highest supervisor at the center and they pretty much said the buck stops with them, we couldn't go any higher. I would LOVE to have a "back-door" number.

While I can understand your frustration, and completely get why you're frustrated, when you're an early adopter, there will be problems. And believe it or not, everyone who is currently using any phone with Windows Phone 8 is an early adopter. I've been an early adopter for years, and I guess I am accustomed to it. Anyway, the updates will come, the problems will get resolved, and you'll be able to move on and enjoy the phones. Myself, I'm not convinced that there are nearly as many hardware problems as people think, regarding the phones powering off or restarting. I haven't had the powering-off issue, but we all have our phones configured differently. The problem I have is lock-ups and restarts, which most, if not all, seem to happen when paired via bluetooth, and either a call or a text interrupts playing music through the aux input of my car. So my particular set of circumstances is bluetooth/playing music/get a call or text and I pull the aux cable from the phone so I can hear the text (always locks up when I do this). It requires a battery pull to resolve. But I'm not upset, because I know that I'm an early adopter, and I know it will be resolved.

I do regret that you're having problems, but I hope that you can take comfort that there is an update already in the works. Let's just hope that Verizon and Microsoft get it to us quickly.

Well, folks, guess what? Phone #2 is a dud, too. My husband got home from work and he's madder than a wet rooster. The refurb phone powered off twice today. He has already called verizon and they are sending another refurb. We're wondering if it's the battery or the sim card that is the problem? When they sent the first refurb, it's just a phone with no battery and no sim card. They had him transfer his to this one.

Any thoughts on whether it could be a bad battery or sim card causing this?

Sounds like something else is wrong and causing the phone to shut off. Battery/Sim swap would be the easiest to test first. Does your husband work in an area with no signal, like the basement of a building? or does he work around high tech medical equipment?

This is getting comical. Husband called yesterday about phone #2 and they said they would send him another phone, right? They said it would get here Monday, via USPS. MONDAY. Guess what? They decided to send it Fed Ex and it came today ... while no one was home. We found the note on the door and called Fed Ex to see if we could get it from the local office (about 30 minutes away), and the girl said she can't guarantee that the driver will go back to the local office tonight but we are welcome to go up there at 6 ..... and wait. Otherwise, it would be available Monday. GAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

This is getting comical. Husband called yesterday about phone #2 and they said they would send him another phone, right? They said it would get here Monday, via USPS. MONDAY. Guess what? They decided to send it Fed Ex and it came today ... while no one was home. We found the note on the door and called Fed Ex to see if we could get it from the local office (about 30 minutes away), and the girl said she can't guarantee that the driver will go back to the local office tonight but we are welcome to go up there at 6 ..... and wait. Otherwise, it would be available Monday. GAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

No offense, but while you have other complaints, I can't quite see complaining they sent a replacement earlier than promised. It also sounds like this is still not getting elevated to a manger. Until then all you will get is what you have been getting - refurbished phones as likely to have problems as not. The techs will still send refurbished phones and (in my experience) VZW does a poor job of evaluating returns before cycling them into refurbished units.

She's in touch with jana8899 from Nokia now. I am sure jana8899 will resolve it for her.

Although jana was able to answer a couple of questions, she could not resolve the issue. She is however, standing by to see how this goes along. The driver didn't make it back to the hub tonight so our one hour round trip was for nothing. They are going to try to make the package available tomorrow.

Not to make anybody get mad and I'm very new to this as well, maybe your husband is accidentally pressing and holding the power button in his pocket? Or maybe the battery is thinner than others and is popping out? Try putting a folded piece of paper in the back and see if that helps. It happens a lot with my Palm Prē

Nah - there are known issues, and the repeated issues demonstrated here with phone after phone after phone are just one of the reasons that I keep saying that the complaints about it being a hardware problem are overstated. There is a software problem, Microsoft knows about it and has created a fix, and we just need to be patient and wait for it to come. If this kind of thing gets you agitated, then being an early adopter isn't for you. Wait until the second or third wave of a completely new, built-from-the-ground-up OS comes around. This OS was built from the ground up. There will be bugs. And as much as most people think this is second gen, it really isn't. WP7 was built on the CE kernel, where WP8 was built on the NT kernel.

I suffer from Early-Adopter syndrome myself. I've overpaid for every Nintendo DS I've ever bought if that gives an idea. :D

Speaking from experience working at one of these call centers, I've seen cases in which a specific PRL would cause a specific software version on a specific model of phone to do exactly what this here Lumia is reported to be doing. I've also seen cases in which an annoying piece of software would get backed up and re-installed to an Android phone over and over and over and over and over again, causing issues to return no matter how many times the person wiped or had their phone replaced. Situations like these have led people to (understandably) believe that warranty and/or refurbished phones are generally beat-up bricks that have been run through a food processor, which they are definitely not. (Can't say I've never heard rumors of tampered packages in the mail though....)

Granted, part of the problem is some reps' overwillingness to try and fix an issue by being generous about replacements. They want to make the customer happy. They truly believe replacing the phone will make the customer happy, because in that rep's mind, it makes it look like we're going above and beyond for the customer. But when the issue returns, the customer gets angrier, calls in, getting yet another rep that thinks they'll make the customer happier by replacing (to make us look generous) rather than rooting out the real problem. It's an endless cycle that only increases the frustration, and sometimes it's hard to work that mentality out of a person.

The reps who typically have the happiest customers are the ones who are *least* generous with replacements, and do everything they can to weed out the real issue or find a real answer. I understand it's frustrating, but generally the reps who are more adamant about troubleshooting for themselves are the ones who most often get things *fixed*.

I've learned to expect the impossible on a daily basis with technology, and especially with software. You can have two of the exact same hardware, and get two entirely different results if even the slightest of conditions are different. As much as people grumble about "paying to beta", this is how the worst of the bugs are found and worked out: The developers are simply unable to find them just by poking around, because they cannot predict what every last person will do to their code. They need the unpredictable to happen in order to solve it. I thank you for taking part in this process. I apologize for the frustration, but please try to be gentle with the reps. They are the ones who know the devices and the network.

For what it's worth, my old Trophy hated the Sync system in my husband's car. (Ironic, right?) The Lumia loves it with hugs and kisses. Difference? I imagine it's the audio-enhancing software you find in HTCs. Either way, it caused my old Trophy to crash when I played music in the car. I knew what caused it, I could live with it. Tech is weird and the easiest way to be "good" at it is to learn to take it in stride. Learn to understand when nobody did anything wrong. Learn to enjoy poking around it. (You're not gonna break it! Well, unless you toss it off a building maybe...) Worried about losing something? Back it up and play some more.

For some of us who have been playing with PDAs since the Palm days (and I swear I've recognized a few names on a few forums from Brighthand), we know how far we can push these devices. Windows Phone 8, even with the bugs, is cake compared to Windows Mobile 6.5 or Android.

Spoke too soon. Husband's third phone is acting up since the update and now MY 822 and my oldest son's 822 are locking up and rebooting. We have to remove the battery. Does it even in the middle of a frickin' phone call!!!!

And now the screen on my 822 and the screen on my mom's goes light to dim, light to dim, all the time.

this might not be the phone for you, this thing has been solid for me, one of the best I have had and that's speaking volumes for a low to mid range phone, and I have had A LOT of phones including i5 and top android phones.

Problem is,to many Nokias are not the phone for anyone. So I will stick to my HTC 8X and Samsung Ativ S.

I actually haven't seen a lot of people complain, in fact this person has two threads going about how bad it is and none of them have worked for them, that's been about it. where do you see a lot of people saying 822 wont work for them?

Spoke too soon. Husband's third phone is acting up since the update and now MY 822 and my oldest son's 822 are locking up and rebooting. We have to remove the battery. Does it even in the middle of a frickin' phone call!!!!

And now the screen on my 822 and the screen on my mom's goes light to dim, light to dim, all the time.

katiegal, my 822 did not exhibit any freezing or rebooting until after the update. Then, it would only do it rarely, but I discovered that it always seemed to happen when I was traveling through the same areas where the data connection would drop out. I fixed the issue a few days ago, and haven't seen my data connection drop out, nor seen the phone reboot.

I went into Settings>Cellular and set Mode selection from "Global", which is what it was showing, to "LTE and CDMA", then I changed Data roaming options to "roam" as most VZW plans, including mine, include domestic data roaming for free. This fixed my issues. You should check your phone and see if these settings are set to Global and don't roam like my phone was. If so, change them and see if the problem goes away.

There is a fix for the issue coming in the next round of updates for this phone. It appears, from this Engineer's point of view, that the software has issues with handing off data connections when bouncing from LTE to 3G and edge. Before I set these settings, I would only see LTE or no data indication by the cellular antenna strength bars. Now I get 3G and 1x when I go through those areas that had issues before, and I no longer loose data, such as when streaming Pandora music. This phone has been rock solid since I made these changes, and I would bet good money the update addresses the issue in the software.

Please also note that there is a fix on this board for the dim-bright-dim issue. It involves going into a completely dark room to recalibrate the ambient light sensor data. All of the issues you are having are software related. The phones, themselves, seem to be very good, and very solid, but there is clearly some teething pains with the software. Keep in mind, this happens to every phone and manufacturer to some level. I've seen several iPhones freeze up when trying to take pictures (including 4S models). Software is very complex and difficult to make without any issues.

I do believe, however, that Nokia really needs to get updates for stuff like this out faster, though I understand the need to make sure they didn't screw something else up. I think some of the teething pains may be from Nokia's lack of being on VZW as it seems this issue is predominately on the 822.